Pages

May 20, 2012

"Trust and faith in your fellow man has no equal.If you have experienced trust you will know its
strength.

You must know yourself before you know others."

I lived through a mellow high, as if sipping wine. The piece starts pouring into a rhythm while it tries to
catch up with the beats that tenderly start picking on the strings. I’m sitting
with my eyes closed and almost imagining the guitar doing a waltz with the
beats. Slowly forgetting what I was thinking and the guitar almost preparing me
for some light blues. Just when the beats got me used to them, Toure pitches in
with words far from understanding. The haunting appeal of his voice drags
across the piece playing with my imagination.

The first sip rich in Malian
flavours being nudged by the subtle blues and the beats keeping me high. The coarseness
of the vocals adding the depth that I just don’t want to let go. Toure pulls
me down and leaves me floating back in space. Just when I realize he’s
playing with my longing for the flavour to return, he comes back to flirt
with the melodies of Mali
again. The wanton camaraderie of Malian rythm and the blues bringing a sudden
melancholy while I feel an unbearable lightness. A mere seven minutes that
could explain humanity beyond language. Just emotions. Pure music.

May 13, 2012

Remember that couple that was trying to conceive a baby to
kill the demon next door? The demon that was creating havoc in the city for the
past decade? Yeah! They finally decided to have a baby to kill him. Similar to
how we get lazy when there’s a fire in the house and wait for the rains to put
it out. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Was breezing through some of the
Hindu mythologies today. I’m sure they have plenty of metaphors that got lost
in translation over years while a bunch of dunces translated them from one
language to another. The Chinese whisper ended up creating far more ridiculous
stories that make Immaculate Conception look real! And now all that’s left of
them is larger than life characters whom we can blame for every puddle of shit
that we end up stepping in.

This post is not an intention of hurting any religious
sentiment but just an attempt of reasoning and questioning. Had to insert that
line before I get dragged to the court of justice. India is a free country after all.
Any citizen is free to drag me to the court for what I write in my personal
space here. And they can practice this right very shamelessly. So, not taking
any chances.

Now, coming back to my question of the day. Why did gods have
to reproduce individuals for objectives like killing demons and monsters? Why couldn’t
they do it on their own? Taking the example of Kumar Sambhava, poor Kartikeya
had to be born and trained by Shiva to
kill TarakaSura. Logically, it looks extremely
stupid that the gods deemed it fine for people on earth and heaven to keep
suffering till they felt a need to kill this Asura and finally conspired with everything possible to get Kartikeya to finally take birth and kill
him. I can’t even come up with words to describe how ludicrous this entire idea
seems to me. It all started with Shiva
meditating on the top of Kailasa
minding his own business. Kamadeva,
the Indian cupid went and messed with his affairs with his nosy arrows and
brought upon himself the wrath of an individual who’s famous for his anger.
Should I call that utter stupidity or reckless behaviour? Nevertheless, at the
cost of Kamadeva’s life, Parvathi and Shiva unite to give birth to the God of War, Kartikeya.

My question: Why couldn’t Shiva ‘The Destroyer’ kill this Taraka
guy himself? Why did the gods have to wait till the complex birth (that’s
another story!) of this war kid, wait for him to grow up (which did not happen
overnight), get trained by his dad and then finally proceed towards his
objective in life? Apparently, some very smart God had endowed this Taraka guy with a boon that only Shiva’s son could kill him. Ha! Technicalities.
Hindu mythology always comes up with excuses to have kids. No wonder our
population is bursting at the seams. Not just that. The kids are born knowing
why they are born. If only I was lucky enough to know the reason of my
existence. Gods conceive kids to kill demons. Regular people have kids to kill
time and I’m fulfilling every bit of that objective. Boons and curses were like
tragic decisions made by the top management. Who in their right mind will endow
a ‘Demon’ with powers that no god can handle? Very similar to reckless
inventions of the present day.

After reading so much about Shiva and Parvathi alone,
my knowledge about conceiving a child has theoretically been ameliorated.
According to what I’ve read, kids can be born out of body dirt, hair strands
and all other parts that have no contribution towards the actual act. I’m not
letting another guy near me till I am ready to mother a child. Don’t want kids
taking birth every time I sneeze, get angry or sweat. And the Indian government
is providing me no privileges apart from the rising inflation. Nevertheless,
these stories do have enough chutzpah to challenge your logic. I would suggest keeping
that aside and trying to pacify your left-side brain by constantly assuring it
that it’s just a story and nothing more. There can be as many temples and
worshippers of these deities all across the world that manage to give a
substantial number of people enough hope to fight with their demons. In the
end, I guess that’s all that counts. Probably, these ridiculous stories have
managed to keep the child inside satisfied with a hope that many of us have
lost. The longing for a better day that many have started losing and the
numbers are just getting larger. Probably, another demon in the making.